For months, Houston city leaders have urged homeowners to clean up their yards in an effort to eliminate potential mosquito breeding grounds and reduce the risk of diseases like West Nile and Zika virus.

But the KHOU 11 News I-Team discovered that in some areas, the city has been slow to follow its own advice.

From piles of tires left along the street in north Houston to a giant dump pile that blocked part of a street in the Acres Homes neighborhood, the I-Team had no trouble finding trash gathering standing water on city-owned land and rights-of-way.

It’s not what people living in these areas expected weeks into a citywide cleanup effort.

Tyrone George said the pile of tires the I-Team found stacked on a city sidewalk has been there for months.

“Nobody’s cleaned them up?” the I-Team asked George.

“Nah,” he said.

Concerned about the threat of the&nbsp;Zika&nbsp;virus, in February city leaders launched a push to clean-up trash and eliminate standing water where mosquitos can breed.

Those tires sit across from a city playground and an elementary school near Victoria and Oxford.

That neighborhood was the target of 21 illegal dumping complaints to the city last year.

Concerned about the threat of the Zika virus, in February city leaders launched a push to clean up trash and eliminate standing water where mosquitos can breed.

“Let me encourage homeowners and those who are property owners, renters, to do anything you can to clean up around your home to remove any sort of containers that can been a breeding ground for mosquitos,” Mayor Sylvester Turner said during a news conference shortly after the city announced its plans for that comprehensive cleanup.

As part of the effort, the mayor announced crew would be working six days a week to pick up dumping.

But a month and a half into that cleanup, the I-Team found trash piles still littered neighborhoods.

Weeks after the city pledged to clean up, the I-Team traveled to different dumping spots and collected water samples looking for mosquitos.

Antonio Delacruz still set his daily schedule around mosquitos.

“Bad. They’re bad,” explained Delacruz as he sat in front of his home in the Fifth Ward. “Get a little sunshine, fresh air during the day because at night, you can’t sit out here.”

But the I-Team found that some of the same mosquito breeding grounds tested a month earlier still hadn’t been touched, 10 weeks into the citywide cleanup.

When we asked the mayor if the city was following its own advice about eliminating potential breeding grounds, he got defensive.

“Sir, reporters need to be fair,” Turner said. “Be fair. Don’t do a disservice to Houstonians. This city is 670 square miles. It’s a large city. You’re not going to cover all of the city in terms of removing every tire and trash in just a matter of a few weeks.”

The city says it’s cleaned up more than 2,600 tons of trash before the floods.

But scientists warn that each passing week can mean an entirely new batch of mosquitos can hatch and develop in neighborhoods left waiting for the city’s promised cleanup.

“If some of these were collected on city property, it's very important for the city to be setting the example,” Carter said, “and keeping the environment clean so that we can have a healthy environment and we’re eliminating the amount of mosquitos as much as possible.”

The city urges anyone who sees illegal dumping to report it by calling 311.